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2012-13
Dimensions: variable components
Materials: cut paper and watercolour
The suites comprise self-portraits of the artist facing three culturally signified portraits of the Malaysian community in the manner of the classical cut-paper silhouette. Reflecting on the artists’ return to her childhood home after 25years, the portraits deal with a confrontation: from questions of return and homelands, to love and belonging, stasis and diaspora. Employing the large array of Batik patterns that have emerged from the various mixings of ethnic groups, colonisations and independence – the patterns voice the diversity and history that Malaysia provoke.
Photography: John Brash

2012
Dimensions: each approx. 270 x 10 x 10cm
Materials: Cast Indian Brass
The sculptural installation marks a material departure and is inspired by two extended trips to India in (2010-12) where I was struck by the prevalence of Eucalyptus saplings across various parts of the country. A legacy of colonial trade and exchange the species has been cultivated for use in the construction industry as a form of structural support for concrete slabs. Seeing clusters of these sapling trunks bridging the floor and ceilings of unfinished buildings, they function for a brief space in time as abstract Australian landscapes- momentary ruptures to the foreignness of the urban Indian environment. Working with a traditional sand-floor foundry in Mysore the scaffolds were cast in brass – a material synonymous with Indian sculpture, architecture and decorative arts – and come to embody the processes of transferral and translation that are implicit to globalisation and intercultural exchange.
Photography: John Brash

2010
Dimensions: each approx. 150 x 100 cm Materials: nylon organza, tulle, glass beads, sequins, thread
This series is a heady and heat-felt contemplation about my return to Melbourne (Australia) after about 5 years away from the country. In the adjustments we make to ourselves in our returns to, or re-arrivals to place – the decisions, thoughts and feelings, which mingle so confusingly and heart-'achingly' in our assessments or re-assessments. In some primal way it is about love - the ties that bind - yearning and obligation, to place and to people. In constructing these pieces I had in mind to poems: He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven by W.B. Yeats; and I had a dove, and the sweet dove died by John Keats, a line from which lends itself as the title to this project. Throughout the project I quote Australian flora. The panels of organza, for me, evoke the colours of this country, those brilliant hues that can be washed out in the stark, drenching light of our skies and then also the ghost-like softness of certain hours. Referring to my practice (the use of henna and cultural motifs) the decorations of these hanging feet are those of the Australian bush.
Photography: John Brash and Museum of Contemporary Art

2009
Dimensions: Variable.
Medium: paper mache, acylic paint, glue, cotton thread, human hair
Query: how to combine belief that the world is to a great extent illusory with belief that it is none the less essential to improve the illusion?
Aldous Huxley, Eyeless in Gaza
The second instalment in an ongoing project based upon readings of the Bhagavagita. (II) draws heavily upon Huxley’s main protagonist’s journal entries across1934 – A series of entries that mark a modern search for a satisfactory centre and meaning of life, and the quest for real liberty. In this connected language I discovered another guide with which to read the poem, akin to Arjuna, when he asks of Krishna: Ah! Yet again recount…

2007-08
Varying Dimensions
Materials: felt, Supacloth, glass and plastic beads, thread, organza, sequins, hosiery
Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between... clinging to the earth, half coming out, half effaced within the dim light, in all attitudes of pain, abandonment and despair. ...They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now - nothing but black shadows.
- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
A project on contemporary slavery, and the myriad forms existing today, each piece in the series depicts a type of bonded or forced labour. Arising from research around Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' the series explores slavery in our ostensibly Post-colonial, Post-slavery present day.
Tracing the silhouette of my cast shadow performing various roles of forced labour, was a way to talk about the many forms slavery takes today with my personal feelings towards the subject, which are deeply mixed, complex, and ambivalent.
Photography: Garry Trinh, John Brash

2014
Dimensions: 270x165x175 cm
Medium: fibreglass
Commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia 2014
The sculpture combines the body of a child with the head of an ancient fish fossil. Created in response to the site of Circular Quay, which encompasses the Opera House, Harbour Bridge and the historic Sydney Sailors Home (1865) the mer-child reflects upon connecting blocks of time, mercantile development and the many waves of people who have reached Australian shores by boat throughout history. The sculpture explores our changing relationship to the sea brought about by technology and industrialisation, such as the disappearance of marine life and our increasing detachment from sea-faring tales and mythology. As a mythological creature that travels upon the seas, the mer-child bears witness to our sea-faring activities.

2012
Dimensions variable
Medium: watercolour, pencil, paper
A suite of paper-works exploring aspects of the Greek god Dionysos, the series draws upon classical references from Nonno’s Dionysaica and Keats Ode to a Grecian Urn. Depicting amphorae in varying states of (dis)repair – complete or broken, the images of the wrestling figures depicted are similarly parts of an entire painted scene, just as much as these objects are fragments of a poem, of culture. These images play with the sensuality of wrestling as a sport and art form – where the two figures can easily travel between opponents and lovers in embrace – an ambivalence foregrounding the Dionysian cult of entertainment.
Photography: Ari Hatzis

2009
Dimensions: 170 x 130 x 3cm
Medium: felt, glass beads, sequins
Commissioned by The Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art
The Prudence of the title is an allegorical reference, but also signals towards a personal 'iconography'. Classically, and later in Christian doctrine as one of the Four Cardinal Virtues, the personification of Prudence is commonly depicted with a snake entwined about her and mirror. The snake is representative of caution – the sense that prudence requires careful thought over hasty decision. Additionally, the mirror - the act of looking into a mirror is representative of self-knowledge. Illustrating the Latin maxim Nosce te ipsum (know yourself) and heavily connected with truth and wisdom. I thought these were interesting explanations for the process and challenge of making a self-portrait.
Photography: Garry Trinh